Beginning at the Beginning
by Sydonia
Summary: Will get more than G later, just so you know....not further than PG-13...might be boring now but will get better...please R&R!!!


Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters, locations, so on...I merely admire the original author and am attmpting to be almost as good as her....yeah right...   
Okay y'all...I'm new here...this is my first fanfic...so if you like it could you please send me lotsa reviews, so I'll know that people are reading my writing? Oh, and I'm not sure if they take their O.W.L.s in the fifth year, but if they don't in the real stories, they do in mine. Sorry in advance.   
This chapter has kinda a slow start, so just be patient please, hopefully it'll turn out good...love lots,   
Sydonia   


Harry's stomach gave a familiar lurch as he passed onto Platform nine and three quarters. He felt he was truly going home as he gazed on the milling witches and wizards with a hazy smile on his face. All around him people in wizarding robes pushing trollies and carrying trunks. Somewhere from behind him he heard a loud shriek and turned around just in time to see a great fat toad come bursting out of a formidable old lady's big red handbag. He chuckled to himself as the woman told off her grandson - the very Neville Longbottom - for being so careless and losing his toad again. Neville was a vey clumsy boy, and was always in trouble for one thing or another.   
A tall red headed someone came up beside him and shook his shoulder. "Harry!" shouted Ron Weasley, Harry's best friend, "Harry! Hellooo...we've got to get on the train, remember?"   
"Oh, uh yeah. Sorry. Zoned out for a minute there." Ron gave him a suspicious look, but realized why Harry was acting so odd when a girl with long black hair almost exactly like Harry's own swished by them. They were surprised how self assured she was, when they were in their first year, they were nervous about everything.   
"It's okay, but c'mon let's go! We need to find some good seats." Harry simply nodded and tore his gaze from the girl's long black hair, so familiar, to follow Ron onto the Hogwarts Express. George and Fred Weasley - Ron's older twin brothers - helped Harry haul his trunk into an empty compartment. Harry and Ron's other best friend - Hermione Granger - was already there. She brightened up when she heard them walking into the compartment. "Harry! Ron! Sorry I didn't wait for you, I wanted to nab this room before it filled up. I was just coming to make sure you two weren't letting your mouths hang open with all those gorgeous new first years."   
"Hermione -"   
"No way -"   
"Relax you two I was just kidding." She giggled and sat down next to a window. Ron sat down next to her and Harry sat across from them on the posh red seats. Hermoine bounced a little on the seat and commented witha huge smile on her face, "Wow, do you realize this is first year we start taking our O.W.L.s? I'm going to start studying as soon as we go to our first classes."   
O.W.L.s were Ordinary Wizarding Levels, and every fifth year took them in place of regular end of year exams.   
"Hermione, we have a whole year to go...it's not like they're tomorrow or anything."   
"Ron, you know what I mean...I just meant that it's exciting that they're this year! Really Ron, this year I'm going ot draw you and Harry up studying schedules...and you ARE going to follow them this time." Harry smiled, as much as Ron and Hermione bickered, he knew how much they loved each other. Neither of them had admitted it to anyone but Harry, and he ha no intention of breaking the code of secrecy his two friends had inflicted on him. Harry wasn't too keen on being the go-between for his two best friends, but he figured that Ron or Hermoine would do it for him, so he toughed it up and did it anyway. On the other hand, he couldn't help thinking about what would happen if the spark between Ron and Hermione sparked...would the Dream Team be split up? Harry didn't know if he would be able to stand it to watch those two together and not feel jealous. But, they were his best friends, so what was he supposed to do?   
Harry's thoughts came back to the real world as the compartment door slid open and a small girl with a huge mass of red hair walked in. She was already in her black roobes, and her hair was like a one-hundred watt bulb against the night sky. She saw Ron and Hermione, but obviously didn't notice Harry, for as soon as she began to sit down on the cushioned bench seat and saw he was sitting there, she gave a little cry and blushed so red it made her hair look pink. She jumped back and looked at her feet and tucked her hair away from her still blushing face. Ron looked as though he wqs trying not to laugh, and Hermione elbowed him and said, "Hello Ginny! Here, why don't you sit down? I was just re-iterating to Ron why one can't apparate on the Hogwarts grounds," then she added in an undertone, "honestly, you'd think he's remember after all the times I've told him, the prat." This made Ginny giggle and nervously she sat next to Harry, as far away from him as she could go.   
Ginny was Ron's little sister, and for as long as Harry had known her she had taken a huge liking to him. She blushed to the tips of her hair everytime she saw him, and always grew very clumsy when she was near him. Harry knew this, and felt almost as awkward as Ginny when she couldn't look at him without turning into a human cherry. "Er, hullo Ginny," said Harry when she sat down.   
"Hello Harry." She muttered, avoiding his eyes. Hermione seemed to sense the tenseness (A/N: is that a word? Sorry I'm not sure) between Harry and Ginny, so she cut in saying, "I was wondering...Ron, since you're the Quidditch team Captain for Gryffindor, I was wondering if there were any open spaces on the team."   
"Hermione, are you trying out for Quidditch? Last time I heard, you thought a Wronski Feint was a Wonky Faint." Harry teased, trying to supress his laughter.   
"For goodness' sake Harry, just because I messed up on some play name in our fourth year doesn't mean that I'm not interested in the sport," and then she added, as an afterthougth, "and it would be very educational to learn about the old makes of brooms and old games and such."   
Ron rolled his eyes at this, but said, "Yes, actually there is an open spot on the team. Last year was Alicia's seventh year so we need a new Chaser. Is that the sort of position you had in mind?   
"Oh yes, I was afraid I would have to be a Beater or something...thanks so much, Ron! I can't wait to try out!" In a sudden act of courage, she gave Ron a quick hug and sat back, pink in the cheeks. Ron looked like someone had told him Christmas was tomorrow. But he came to his senses quickly enought to say, "As a matter of fact, we need a new Beater also -"   
"If you ask me, Weasley, I'd say you need more than a new Beater. Perhaps a dozen extra players to make up for your abysmal plays." Ron was cut off when the compartment door slid open again and three of their least favorite people sauntered in. Draco Malfoy and his cronies, Crabbe and Goyle. But with them, was the first year who looked like Harry. She was standing with Malfoy and they were both smirking at the people in the compartment. Crabbe and Goyle were half grunting and half laughing.   
"Malfoy, I seem to remember that ever since Ron has been Captain, we haven't lost a single game to you...Captain Malfoy. I suggest that you get therapy, you seem to be in denial." Hermione said, quite calmly, holding Ron back by the neck of his robes. Ron was pulling at Hermione's grip and was muttering mutinous things under his breath.   
"Call off your poor, underfed dog Granger, I didn't come here to beat you in the come back department. I wanted to introduce Potter to his cousin, Liara. I also wanted Liara to know that there is a bad side to every family, and that she shouldn't be ashamed to have someone like you, Potter, in her family."   
"Come off it, Malfoy. I don't have a cousin. I don't have any family left."   
"Oh, but Potter, you do have family. They just didn't want you. Couldn't be seen with a Mudblood like you. From what Liara has told me, her father had a brother who married a Muggle named Lily. Then they went and got themselves killed by the Dark Lord, the idiots, and you were left. You aren't a Pure Blood, Potter, Liara's family didn't want you to dirty it up."   
"Right, Malfoy, then you take your new little friend and shove it," Ron said through clenched teeth.   
"I think we will go, Weasley, it smells in here. Can't have that, now can we."   
"Good, your prescence is making my new robes slimy," said Harry. Malfoy made no sign of hearing him, and meandered out the door. Liara gave Harry one last smirk and set off after Crabbe and Goyle.   
Harry's mind was in a torrent. All this time, he had family? He had been told that he was the last Potter, and that's why he had to live with his mother's muggle sister and her family. The Dursley's were awful, but did Harry want to live in family with someone like Liara? Harry happened to put great trust in Professor Dumbledor, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and he thought that if anyone told hinm of his family, it would have been the headmaster. Harry didn't know what to think, and when he looked up, all the members of the compartment were looking at him curiously. Hermione was looking very annoyed, and Ron was sitting there with an   
open-mouthed stare. Ginny was trying not to look at him through the curtain of hair covering her face. "Harry?"   
"Why didn't you say anything?"   
"You have family!"   
"Harry, didn't you even know?"   
Harry's friends were talking right and left and he had no idea what to say, when he was saved by the plump witch with the food cart. She rolled the squeaky cart in and smiled warmly at them. She gestured at the stacks of cauldron cakes and chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, among other sweets. Harry absentmindedly bought a few of each kind and thanked her as she turned to leave. He sat down with his bag of food, and said, "I didn't know I had family. No one ever told me."   
"Not even Dumbledor?" That was Ginny. She looked suprised at her own courage.   
"Not even Dumbledor."   
"Oh, Harry, you have family other than the Durselys! Why did Dumblesor send you to them, then?" Hermione wondered out loud.   
"I don't know, Herms. But I have a feeling he didn't want me growing up with them." Harry was going to mention his suspicion of Liara being like the Malfoys, but he didn't want to seem to dramatic.   
"Why I wonder..." Ron was eyeing the food in Harry's lap. Harry saw this, and thought it was a good escape from the conversation.   
"I don't know, but I dont want to talk about it until I talk to Dumbledore. Here, I'm hungry." Hermione sensed the end of the discussion, and helped Harry divvy up the food. The four of them happily made their way's through fizzing whizbees, Droobles' Best Blowing Gum, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, several stacks of Cauldron Cakes, and mugs of iced pumpkin juice. Harry finally got the card he didn't have from the last chocolate frog, a card of Minerva the Enchantress. She gazed out of the picture with heavy lidded eyes and smiled with blood red lips and perfectly white teeth. She winked at him from her frame and slowly slid from view. 

When the Hogwarts Express arrived at Hogwarts, the trip up to the castle in the invisble horse-drawn carriges was a blur, and so was the time it took for everyone to get setttled in the Dining Hall. Harry spent his time looking at the enchanted ceiling, bewitched to look like the night sky - tonight it was clear as crystal and he could see every star. Hermione and Ron had long since given up trying to engage him in conversation, and were sitting to the right of him quietly talking about their new subjects.   
Once everyone was seated, The Deputy Headmistress, Professer McGonagall brought out a frayed, patched wizard's hat and a three legged stool. The babble of talk quickly died down. The Sorting was about to begin.   
There were four houses at Hogwarts. There was Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and the house that Malfoy was in, Slytherin. Every year the Sorting Hat sang a song, and Harry found it quiet interesting and sometimes funny, but this year he didn't even hear it as he stared and Liara stainding among the first years. She had a grim sile on her face and was looking at the boy in front of her with a loathing look on her pale face.   
"Potter, Liara!" Shouted Professor McGonagall, and Harry's cousin glided up to the stage and put the sorting hat on. Immediately, the hat screamed, "SLYTHERIN!" for the whole Hall to hear. She pulled of the hat, shook back her hair and swept over the the Slytherin table. She purposely stepped on Harry's foot on her way there. He winced but said nothing, and avoided the whole table's eyes when they looked questioningly at him.   
The rest of the first years were sorted, and the feast went by in a blur. Harry finished eating, and waited for the Hall to finish. The golden plates were cleared, and everyone stood up to make their ways to their houses. Harry, however, didn't follow the Gryffindor crowd. He went to the Headmaster's office.   
The stone gargoyle gaurding the entrance to secret staircase jumped out of the way when Harry muttered "cockroach cluster" and he trudged up the long staircase. Harry knocked on the heavy door, and heard a man's voice say from within, "Come in, Harry." Harry didn't pause to wonder how Dumbledor knew it was him, and entered the office. Dumbledore was sitting at his claw-footed desk with his long fingertips like a tent in frront of his face. Harry sat down in a cushioned chair and Dumbledor said, "Hello Harry, what is on your mind?"   
"Professor, why didn't you tell me that I have family?"   
"Ah, Harry, to answer that, I shall begin at the beginning, for I find that is often the best place to start." 


End file.
